Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Gonna be a bird catastrophe over the Gulf tonight

Most songbirds migrate at night, flight speed maybe 25mph for the smallest to 40 for the bigger ones.

Based on weather radar returns ( dots on the map) an estimated 340 million migrants were/are in the air last night, riding favorable winds in clear skies, most coming in from the Gulf of Mexico up from the Yucatán. This is peak migration season.

https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/live-migration-maps/



Actually, even given such numbers, they’re not always that visible on the ground the next day because they come down scattered pretty thin over the landscape.

THIS is what is forecast to happen along the coast tonight, in the case Corpus Christi: Strong cold front w/thunderstorms. Nearly perfect timing (a bit earlier in the night might be better). Southerly winds pushing birds north over the Gulf abruptly doing a 180 with heavy rain.



Which means if you’re a songbird over open water, your forward progress is gonna slow to little or none while getting hammered from above. This is what Windy.com predicts for Saturday morning; songbird catastrophe.



And here is the predicted migrant forecast for tonight as the front approaches the coast….



If this were a computer simulation, picture maybe 100 million little dots creeping north, then piling up against that cold front and getting scattered all over. Birds don’t get tired, they fly until they run out of fuel. Those over land or lucky enough to make landfall land immediately.

Always a crapshoot but conditions are right for what is called a “fallout”, best I’ve seen in years. In a big one birds are everywhere, practically every bush and tree. Ever’body and their brother into birds is gonna be at the coast with binocs in the morning. Could be spectacular.

Kinda confused Birdy.

Are you saying this is gonna kill a bunch of Tweetys?

Or be a bird watcher's dream?

Sound like both.

Exactly right on both counts. There could be windrows of dead songbirds washed up on the beach tomorrow, I saw one like that thirty years ago.

The birds are racing each other back to the breeding range, first ones back get the best territories. All the survivors want to do after a fallout is refuel ASAP and head on north, so much so they often ignore people, allow close approach.

Ordinarily they scatter inland pretty quick from the coast during the day but 20+mph winds out of the north tomorrow should slow that up. A good (or bad from the birds’ perspective) fallout you can pick up 80+ species in a hour.

Tough world out there.

An estimated three billion birds head south to the Tropics every year. One billion return.

But, as long as they can raise enough young to cover the losses it’s a going concern.

The thunder storms were rolling in here along the central Florida coast as I went to bed last night.

My weather station is saying the winds hit 35 mph.
The gusts were coming in hard sharp jabs that really rocked the trees.
I was up numerous times watching for downed trees.

On the up side, we got a 1/4 inch of rain which isn't a drop in the bucket for us but we barely had a 1 inch of accumulated precipitation over the last two months so a little more was very welcome.

It's calm now, there are multiple Chuck-Will's-Widow's calling to each other as I have my coffee and compose this post, can say that I've heard then in a while.

It'll be some of both. We just had a fallout of loons locally. Loons are such big strong fliers that they have body reserves which get them through almost anything. But... They are so strong they fly at higher altitude and can and do get into icing conditions as they get up here to the upper end of their migratory flights. They ice up and then do the same thing the smaller birds do, they run out of gas and just come down where that happens to be. Unlike a lot of ducks, they have to have water and a good sized amount of it to get airborne. On the ground they are pretty helpless, they can get to and from the nest by sort of toboggan a short distance. People who try to help them often find out they will defend themselves with that beak, and they are competent at that.

Years when we have an early blizzard and it has remained mild north of us the small birds and large alike catch hell like Birdy is talking about when they've lingered up north too long. Most species will not migrate until they have adequate fat reserves (a full tank of gas). Birds like Woodcock which get very little nutrition from other then a single source can win up 2000 miles from their winter homes in drought conditions come spring and a lingering drought will not only result in zero surviving broods, it kills many adults.

For birds, life is all too frequently lived on a razor thin margin. something like a scarcity of their preferred protein source can and often does kill a year's worth of chick production when they cannot support production of new feathers.

Pretty interesting!

I'm anxiously waiting for the orioles to get here. Should be any day now.

Woodcock nest on my place every year. The soil is pretty consistent in moisture and I keep areas thick by hinge cutting the red maples. Doing it for the deer, but apparently it makes for good woodcock nesting conditions.

I hate to hear this . We don't have the volume of birds we usually have this time of year. Hoping that changes in the next few weeks.

Love hunting those things .

One of the things I have learned is that there is precious damned little in am animal's native habitat that is not important in a good way for the animals living there. Many of what we see as detrimental aspects of an environment are in fact beneficial and the absence of those aspects can be the cause for large scale losses in that population.

Crossing the Gulf Of Mexico is obviously a very hazardous activity for thousands of birds annually, and perhaps thousands of times that in bad years. Yet the passage is preferred to overland through Mexico. For sure, the challenge presented makes better birds of the survivors when considered over time. The humility to look at the whole of an event for understanding is a difficult concept for humanity.

Birdie, is there much of a chance some of these migrating birds would be flying above the storms?

What the Wind Don’t Get the John Kerry Chinese Windmills Will.

F’ck All ..

Interesting

It’s not easy being a bird I expect. A Grosbeak showed up yesterday. Haven’t seen any Orioles yet. They usually stop over on their way north. We haven’t had the amount of hummingbirds we usually do at this time of year. This last cold front messed up fishing. Everything depends on the weather.

Roughly 20 years ago, while wade fishing off Grand Isle Louisiana we unfortunately witnessed some the loss from a similar event.

Tanagers and others washing up on the beach.

No. It doesn't take much of a storm to reach 20,000 feet. Oxygen is a much more scarce commodity up there.

Had two monarch butterflies and a tweety fly into the house this morning while I was outside watering. Only know cause the wife yelled at me for leaving the doors open to let the cold morning air in. 🤣😂🤣🤪.

She shooshed them out successfully.

That is fascinating to me. I never knew that was a thing until I saw birds literally falling out of the sky onto Dauphin Island some years ago.

I saw a flock of Orioles here in Kansas a few days ago. I’ve never seen one, a flock, before. They spent two days in the same place then moved on.

The bird population was definitely down in central Florida this winter. Last year I recorded 43 different species within half a mile of our place. This winter in the same area I only got to 32 species with fewer sightings of any of the species. I've read what Miles58 posted and I am particularly worried about the loons going down because they iced up during their migration. We've had three in the lake at the cottage for years and it just wouldn't be the same up there without them.